My Engagement Story

Since I had an even busier day than usual involving many tutus (I have delivered 16 tutus so far to the dance school... more to come) and a committee meeting, plus all of the daily grind stuff, it has come to be 9pm and I haven't taken a single picture, nor written my blog post. Way back here I mentioned that I would have to tell my engagement story sometime as an illustration of how unromantic Adam and I are. So today is that day... here it is.

I was already a few months pregnant with Laina (and when I think back, I actually have no concept of when we got engaged... I know I was at least 3 months pregnant but less than 7 months....). We were living in an old rented house with my sister as our other housemate. At that point, we had already been living together for 2 years, and while we were pretty sure we would spend the rest of our lives together, marriage wasn't ever discussed, we just thought everything was great as it was.

Adam's parents already knew that I was pregnant, and one evening we went over to their house for dinner. After we had eaten, Adam's mom called him into a different room and it became obvious to me that she was giving him something that she didn't want me to know about. After coming back from the other room, Adam went straight to his jacket and put something in the pocket. My curiousity was piqued. I had to know.

Like a foxhound on the scent, I bagdered Adam to know what she had given him the entire drive home. I was so fixated on finding out his secret, I didn't notice that he had taken off his jacket at home and hung it up on "horsey" just inside the door.

This is "horsey". He/ it figures heavily in this story. It is a wooden coat stand from Adam's childhood that still lives with us.

Eventually, we went to bed, Adam still stubbornly refusing to enlighten me as to what his mom had given him. When I woke up in the morning, the first thing that popped into my head, was that the "item" was still in his coat pocket which was hanging on "horsey". I bolted from the room just as Adam groggily realized his mistake. Being that I was slower, and also pregnant, Adam reached his coat before I did, but he didn't want to waste time fumbling with the "item", so he grabbed "horsey" in it's entirety, tucked it under his arm, and ran for the safety of the bathroom. I got there just seconds after him and wedged my knee and head in the closing doorway. He managed to dislodge my knee by pushing on it, but forgetting that my head was still halfway in the door, he tried to slam the door shut.

It hurt. I decided to change my tactic and go for the sympathy vote, so I turned and ran away crying loudly (but fakely). I threw myself face down on our bed and pretended to cry. Feeling guilty, he came after me to apologize, but I was unrelenting. I told him I would not stop crying until he told me what he had in his pocket.

Always a sucker for my tears, he gave up and said "Fine, if you want to know so bad...." and he held out a little box containing his great grandmother's engagement ring and said, "my mom gave me this in case I wanted to ask you to marry me." Taking this as a proposal, I quickly dried my (fake) tears and said yes.

So let's recap. Adam is in his underwear. I berate him, he slams my head in a door, I fake cry until he basically throws an engagement ring at me. No lit candles, rose petals strewn about, or getting down on one knee. Just pure mayhem. Which is basically the way we live and breathe.

PS. Here we are on our wedding day when I was 7 months pregnant. This was in the days before we had digital photography... so I don't have many pics oon my computer and I just realized Adam has his eyes closed here. Oops!

PPS. He later admitted that he wasn't even asking me. His mom had given him the ring just in case he wanted to ask me... he hadn't decided yet... I misunderstood him.

PPPS. Regardless of how unromatic and goofy we are, I love him very much and he loves me too!